A recent ABC report showed that many of the nation’s largest tire retailers are selling older tires as new – even though manufacturers and consumer advocate groups say that tires more than six years old become brittle and may cause severe injury.

The report

The report was recently broadcast on ABC’s 20/20. The news team went undercover to several large retailers in the United States such as Goodyear, Sears and Wal-Mart to buy new tires. However, in many cases, what they were sold was anything but new. In fact, some of the ‘new’ tires were almost 12 years old.

Why are older, unused tires bad?

Older, unused tires – those that simply haven’t sold and are sitting in a retailer’s inventory – wouldn’t seem to pose a problem to consumers at first glance. There’s certainly no problem with purchasing furniture or other household items that have been in a retailer’s inventory for several years. However, tires are a different story.

As tires age, they dry out and can be very dangerous. A cursory look at the outside of the tire wouldn’t generally reveal this fact. However, looking at the inside of the tire might – something that most of us simply don’t do.

Certain tire and auto manufacturers, along with consumer advocate groups, say that tires over 10 years old should be replaced – and that includes tires that are sitting in inventory unused. Some auto manufacturers such as Ford, Chrysler, BMW, Audi and Toyota recommend that tires be replaced six years after they were manufactured.

Do you know how old your tires are?

That’s a question that most Americans can’t answer. The report says that most consumers simply look at the remaining tread of their tires to determine how much tire life remains. Determining the age of your tires is easy. Every tire has a number on it that shows when it was made. The number shows the week and the year. For example, the number 346 means that the tire was made in the 34th week of 2006 (or possibly 1996). The number 227 means that the tire was made in the 22nd week of 2007 (or possibly 1997) and so on.

Retailers know the dangers, but continue to sell

The report caught employees at some of the nation’s largest tire retailers selling tires that they knew were old – yet they sold them anyway. Retailers say that there isn’t any concrete data showing that older, unused tires are defective and claim that federal and/or state regulations don’t require them to take older tires out of their inventory.

To view the video report from ABC’s 20/20 segment, go to: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4821865